Preview

Jefferson Davis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
990 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Jefferson Davis
Alexus Moore Jefferson Davis was a complicated man who accomplished a lot during his lifetime. Many historians debate about the kind of man this Confederate President was; whether he was a man of many ideas or just an insecure man who just did what he was told. This man, whom many call an “enigma,” went through life looking up to great men and always doing what those men thought was best (pg. 4, line 5). The three essays written by William C. Davis tell a story of Jefferson Davis’s life and in the pursuit of trying to understand the great man William Davis showed three main reoccurring themes. Those three themes that really showed what kind of person Jefferson Davis was, was his insecurity, indecisiveness, and his short temper. Jefferson Davis showed is insecurity in many ways like in his inability to admit when he was wrong and his inability to get along with men of which he would consider himself equal in intellectual ability. William Davis mentioned that Jefferson Davis only really got along with women and African American slaves (pg. 10, line 7). This shows how much his need was to be the best and most intelligent in every aspect of his life. He got along with women and African American slaves because they were not as educated on most subjects as he was so he never had to debate with them and they always found him interesting. This is how badly insecure Jefferson Davis was of his own ability. Even with his second marriage to a Varina Howell showed his insecurities because they fought all the time because of Jefferson Davis’s need to be correct all the time. William Davis noted that the only reason Varina and Jefferson’s marriage lasted as long as it did was because “Varina finally was willing to subordinate her own strong will to her husband’s” (pg. 10, line 5). William Davis says on page thirteen, line seven on that page that Jefferson Davis “presents a consistent portrait of insecurity,” and “indecisive, sensitive, to criticism, obstinate, unable to

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Better Essays

    Founding Brothers Summary

    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages

    He also introduces to the readers a crucial theme of his book, which is the importance of compromise, the importance of the individual relationships in the early Union, and the strict beliefs that the Founding Fathers had for one another. Since they knew each another so well and were very aware of the importance of reputation, their disagreements reproduced very high stakes. Starting with a violent clash, Ellis sets the stakes for which these men had learned to debate one another. Other stories end in violent death, but the reader now understands that Ellis views these relationships as heated and fanatical. The fine line between private life and public is often difficult to recognize among political figures whose lives and ideals were so closely tangled. Ellis's version of the Jefferson and Adams relationship will be explicitly…

    • 1169 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the memoir, Davis asserted that blacks “increased from a few unprofitable savages to millions of efficient Christian laborers.” Therefore, Jefferson and many other Lost Cause sympathizers, believed that Civil War had nothing to do with slavery and everything to with states’ rights. Jefferson’s quote speaks to the larger argument that slaves supported their old way of life. Blight demonstrates the significance of Southern memory in regards…

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thomas Jefferson

    • 999 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The third president of the United States was Thomas Jefferson. He had been the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. In an age of great men Jefferson was remarkable for his wide-ranging curiosity on many subjects. He helped the United States get started, and his plans for the future helped it grow. Many of the good things Americans enjoy today have come from Jefferson's devotion to human rights.…

    • 999 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    What They Fought for

    • 1332 Words
    • 6 Pages

    What they fought for is an analysis of a collection of nearly a thousand personal letters and journals entries written by the soldiers who fought America’s famous Civil War. This book seeks to define the ideology of what the soldiers understood they were fighting for, and their comprehension of the outcome of their service .Although counter arguments agree that most soldiers could not give a solid explanation of why they fought for, nor the real Constitutional issues that were at stake; the thoughts the soldiers recorded show that they fought for more than just masculine identity; they highly valued being at home safe with their loved ones, at any cost. This book gives an inside perception of the Civil War, and a broad understanding of the sentiments of the people of that era. Mc.Pherson successfully defines the individual motivation of each of the men who volunteered and risked their lives for what they believed was right, and the glorious cause to fight for.…

    • 1332 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Before Thomas Jefferson was known as the third president of the United States he was elected as the first secretary of state by George Washington. He was the second youngest member delegate in the second continental congress at Philadelphia in which he was selected for drafting the Declaration of independence which is a part of our nation’s constitution to which he acquires a lot of his fame. He was also very well known for the three-fifths comprise which is one of the many analytical highlights discussed in the Negro President by Gary Wills. His personal life also became a scandal and his views on slavery which John C. Miller elaborates on events in his life in the book Wolf By The Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. However his ultimate legacy was the founding of the University of Virginia.…

    • 3223 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Lost Cause Analysis

    • 597 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The psychological effect of these wounds was unbearable for the South, so there was a need to overcome what they experienced and felt. Jefferson Davis and Edward Pollard constructed a defense of the southern spirit and provided a foundation for southern pride that evolved into the Lost Cause. Historians agree with how the mythology of the Lost Cause was created, but there is a general disagreement as to whether or not the South intentionally created the myth or it was an unintentional creation. William C. Davis introduces an idea worth more study when he brings up the possibility that the South unintentionally created the…

    • 597 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Abraham Lincoln’s star shined when his administration took place during the Civil War proving excellency in both politically and rhetorically. From that war the 16th president got his most famous nick name as the Great Emancipator that dwells between Americans till the present day. However, history doesn’t say quit the same about the complete representation of Abraham Lincoln’s attitude towards the war and even the issue of slavery. Such a title proposes an acceptance that the civil war was a war for abolishing slavery and freeing the slaves under the lead of a free man who is motivated by the moral code of equality between blacks and whites. The sentiment about slavery was totally different than today’s. Slaves were private property and not even considered as human beings who have lost rights as Americans. Actually, slaves were a joker in the pack to both Northerners and Southerners. Saying all this make the slavery issue seems the cover of the civil war. Therefore, the goal of this chapter’s second section is to examine whether slavery was used only as a front image to fulfil a higher aim and securing the country from the danger that disturbed it with the threat of dissolving the union.…

    • 266 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Jefferson Davis was sometimes referred to as a Southern cheif, being born in Kentucky. He remained a plain man of the people, obeying the social law of his section; something of an aristocrat. Developing an aristocrat was a prime advantage of a republic. He was of Welsh descent and Pennsylvania antecedents, coming from "poor but honest"parents. His father, Samuel Davis, was a small farmer in Kentucky. Jefferson Davis was named after the president, therefore his name originally being Thomas Jefferson, but he dropped the Thomas to give himself a more distinctive name. His theory was that men with ill-sounding names do not get very far in politics, which was what he wanted to go into.…

    • 294 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    If Jefferson Davis was the ember, then it was Edward Pollard that provided the wind to start the firestorm in constructing this image of the South with his books The Lost Cause and The Lost Cause Regained. Pollard championed the idea of the South fighting for states’ rights, slavery was not cruel, and the South fought against great odds. Pollard, in his attempt to write history, stated “The Union was nothing more than convenience of the States, and had no mission apart from them.” Pollard saw the political division line between the North and South to be coincidental that this line separated slave holding states and non-slave holding states. Pollard paints the Confederate army as “ragged and poorly-equipped.” This was to contrast the Confederate…

    • 327 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The romanticized version of the Civil War creates a picture of the North versus the South with the North imposing on the South. However, after reading “The Making of a Confederate” by William L. Barney, one can see that subdivisions existed before the war was declared. The documents analyzed by Barney primarily focus on the experiences of Walter Lenoir, a southern confederate and a member of the planter elite. His experiences tell a vivid story of a passionate and strongly opinioned participant of the Civil War as well as demonstrate a noticeably different view involving his reasoning when choosing a side. Between analyzing this fantastic piece of literature and other resourceful documents from “Voices of Freedom” by Eric Foner, one can get a better idea of what the conflict was about, where the Confederacy originated from, the cause for the secession, and how Americans experienced the war and understood its meaning.…

    • 1719 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thomas Jefferson

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages

    If I could erase an era from education, it would be 1700-1799. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson proposed the two-track system known as “the laboring and the learned.” This was a method of education, where those with natural academic ability were allotted scholarships to continue their studies, while filtering out those with less intellectual ability for industrial job endeavors and vocational. This system leads to and supported the “two tear educational plan that has endured into the present time. According to Jefferson, ignorance and sound self-government could not exist together: the one destroyed the other. A despotic government could restrain its citizens and deprive the people of their liberties only while they were ignorant. Jefferson could never completely separate education from government. With the fullest faith in the ability of man to govern himself, Jefferson nonetheless realized the responsibility of self-government could be assumed successfully only by an enlightened people. As a result, he came up with the two-track system.…

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Company Aytch is a book that depicts the idealistic memory of a young confederate of the Civil War named Sam Watkins. Some historians articulate towards Watkins having insufficiency of precise facts and sometimes alteration or exaggeration on certain issues. (Watkins & Inge, Introduction) However, it is important to appreciate that Sam Watkins was a survivor that has revealed his recollection of the battles as he has experienced them, and although some may believe his memory has some deficiencies he has a real life testimony that cannot be too farfetched from the reality of the life of a soldier during the Civil War. Sam Watkins was born on the 26th day of June on his father’s farm in Columbia Tennessee where he worked during his youth. There is not much told about other work experiences other than Sam working as a clerk in a local store until he enlisted with Company H of the First Tennessee Infantry in the year of 1861. Sam was only 21 years old, a young confederate, and at this time many signs of war were uprising between the North and the South. (Watkins & Inge, Introduction). His entry is the beginning of the memoirs told by Sam Watkins, an ordinary soldier, not of any high rank, which indeed gives the reader another perspective of the reality of the battles faced during the Civil War. Furthermore, it broadens the view of the emotional triumph a frontline soldier and what they went through rather than focusing on the higher ranking officers. Watkins tells in great detail his experiences and writes of his historical remembrances years later, but he never hides the fact that he is writing solely on his memory and what he saw. In addition to him repeatedly reminding the reader that he writes of his recollections only, he also reminds the reader that what he writes is true. Furthermore, he encourages the reader to refer to history for other historical facts. Later in the report I will tell of an occurrence that…

    • 1178 Words
    • 34 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In his book “The Jefferson image in the American Mind (1960), the writer Merrill Peterson is basically showing how American’s people see Thomas Jefferson. They have always seen him as a…

    • 1024 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    R.B. Bernstein, a professor of law at New York Law School, and author of nearly twenty books on Early American legal and diplomatic history, is one of the latest in the long list of historians to attempt to tackle the life of Jefferson. In his work, Thomas Jefferson, Bernstein provides a well-organized and balanced history of Jefferson as he traces his life from his birth into one of Virginia’s wealthiest families, to his death as a man who was ridden with debt and insecure of his place in history. Published in 2003, the strength of Bernstein’s text does not lie in its ability to dissect this enigma of history, but in his ability to lay out his life and offer the facts as they exist without adding too much of his own opinion. Bernstein’s ability to write without muddling up the information he is presenting gives the reader a fairly unbiased look at the man who, in most of the other works he is covered in, takes the form of the authors perceptions. This is not to say that he does not give Jefferson credit for his achievements, or fault him where he deserves it, but Bernstein is able to point out these positive and negative features of Jefferson’s life without adding too much conjecture.…

    • 1230 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jefferson wears a tie

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Jefferson seems to be a rather reasonable man that sticks to himself; he got somehow a few routines that he like to do such as, getting that cup of tea and doing that small talk on his way to the office. A man that has a relative important role in the form, that means he got work on his table and need to make sure the quality of his work is in top notch quality, you could say that he takes a certain pride in his hard work. As the story progresses he develops different personalities, initially he cares a lot about his work and don’t have the need to socialize during work hours. But now he begins strategically different towards have himself noticed by his superiors. It’s now that he begins to socialize more, and enjoy reading the news with a cup of tea before he starts his work.…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays